Difficult Survival

Su Qing'an tried to move his body. His ankle had been slightly sprained in the earlier fall, and as he rolled down here, pebbles had cut numerous shallow wounds across his body.

But this action seemed to touch a sensitive nerve in the Girl. She tightened her grip on the stone in her hand and warned Su Qing'an:

"Please don't move around carelessly. We shouldn't get too close to each other."

"Alright. I just wanted to ask whether there's any medicine here to treat a sprain, or any anti-inflammatory medication."

Su Qing'an understood the Girl's behavior. Though they had agreed to survive together, they were still strangers to each other.

In such an extreme environment, the Girl's actions were correct. As the man with the physical advantage, he needed to be more careful not to provoke her unnecessarily.

If he could not even show that basic respect, then their so-called agreement would be nothing but empty words.

"...This is a shelter built specifically to deal with the outbreak of Honkai. There used to be medicine here, but as you can see, this place is already a wreck. Even avoiding the monsters is purely a matter of luck."

"As for medicine, it should be buried beneath the rubble. But there's still a certain amount of food and water."

The Girl's hand holding the stone relaxed slightly. As if she had calmed down, she explained to Su Qing'an in a composed voice.

"If you're hungry, the food is in that cabinet." The Girl pointed toward a cabinet in the corner. It was clear that it had originally been designed like a wall of cabinets, but now most of it was buried beneath the rubble.

The fact that the space storing food had remained exposed was already an unexpected stroke of luck.

Su Qing'an nodded to show he understood. Without medicine, how long could the wound on his back hold out?

He did not know whether the monster's claws had carried a virus, but unlike an ordinary wound, when he tentatively touched it, he felt something like a scab. The hard texture, along with the numbness in that area, made him uneasy.

Yet the fact that it no longer needed to stop bleeding also reduced the urgency of finding medicine and bandages.

Reality did not give him much room to think. After eating and drinking a small amount, Su Qing'an chose to curl up and rest, just like the Girl.

There were no blankets or beds, but after such severe physical and mental exhaustion, he quickly fell asleep.

The next day.

"...How is your sprain?" the Girl suddenly asked.

"It's alright." Su Qing'an glanced at his ankle as he answered.

The cuts on his body from yesterday had already begun to scab over, and the sprained ankle should not affect his movement anymore.

But what the youth did not tell the Girl was that he could feel something strange beginning to happen to his body.

It was not a simple discomfort like a cold or fever. He could not put that strange feeling into words, yet instinctively, he understood that his body was undergoing a bad change.

Perhaps because Su Qing'an had been so respectful and never overstepped his bounds, his conversations with the Girl became far more natural than they had been yesterday.

Neither the Girl nor Su Qing'an liked remaining silent in this sort of environment. Some conversation could undoubtedly ease the pressure on their minds, so they tacitly began talking.

Little by little, they spoke of their respective pasts and all sorts of trivial matters. Just like this, they easily crossed the barrier of having known each other for only a short time. Perhaps compared to this bleak reality with no future, every scene from the past seemed so beautiful.

Leaning his head against the cold wall, Su Qing'an revealed what should have been his greatest secret.

"I'm not from this world."

The youth's tone was faint, As if he were merely stating an utterly boring fact. Perhaps in their present circumstances, even the most earth-shattering secret could only become idle conversation.

The Girl did not mock words that sounded as absurd as a dreamer's ravings. Logically speaking, questioning the other person's mental state should have been the first reaction.

Yet after seeming to consider it seriously, she asked:

"What kind of world is it?"

Su Qing'an thought for a moment, then answered just as seriously:

"It's also not a particularly beautiful world. There are still wars between people, and death and tragedy arise because of them."

"But it is also a very beautiful world. There is no calamity called Honkai there. Many people can enjoy peace without having to struggle for it. Where I lived, what people worried about was usually not their lives, but money."

The Girl listened intently. A dreamlike, translucent smile appeared on her face as she said:

"A world without Honkai?"

"Su Qing'an, that kind of world sounds wonderful. I like it."

"Even if humanity still argues endlessly, even if there are wars, even if tragedies occur, there can be no calamity more cruel and unreasonable than Honkai."

Su Qing'an silently nodded. Had his words woven an unattainable dream for the Girl?

It was clearly a shore beyond reach, yet today's words might give the Girl different hopes and obsessions.

Perhaps, in a world like this, retaining hope in one's heart was not necessarily a good thing.

But perhaps this was all he could do.

The youth smiled.

"Hey. You already know my name, so isn't it only natural to give me your name in return?"

In truth, he had always disliked smiling, but when facing this Girl, he felt that he had no choice but to smile.

The Girl glanced at the youth's face, tilted her head slightly away, and said:

"I'm not telling you."

The Girl's strange awkwardness seemed quite adorable in Su Qing'an's eyes.

The third day.

Staying alive was difficult.

Both the girl who refused to reveal her name and Su Qing'an understood that.

From the information the girl had provided, he learned that the calamity known as a Honkai outbreak had ended less than a day ago. The monsters he had encountered on the streets before had once been human, and such creatures were called Zombies.

Even more terrifying monsters known as Honkai Beasts roamed this city.

Once they encountered one, without any means of transportation, death would be the only outcome.

With the two of them not even strong enough to defeat a Zombie, hiding themselves was their only option if they wanted to survive.

In just three short days, Su Qing'an had already experienced hardships completely different from his previously easy life—hardships that were poles apart from it.

Having his will constantly struggle against hunger, thirst, fear, and confusion every minute and every second was incomparably agonizing. If the girl had not been there to face it with him, sparing him from tasting loneliness, his mental state would have deteriorated badly by now.

Simply being together was enough to ward off much of the negativity in their minds.

They were currently staying in an emergency shelter that had been half destroyed. It contained a certain amount of food and water, meaning that for the time being, they did not have to risk their lives trying to find supplies in the outside world.

That alone was already rare luck.

Through his conversations with the girl, Su Qing'an had roughly guessed what kind of world he had come to.

A Honkai outbreak, Honkai Infection, Zombies, Honkai Beasts—with all that information combined, he could only conclude that he had most likely arrived in the world of the mobile game he used to play, Honkai Impact 3rd.

He was the kind of player who only played the game and skipped all the story CGs. He had read almost none of the comics and visual novels the game company had made to flesh out the IP.

Relying on his scant understanding of the Honkai setting, he could not determine exactly what point in the story he was at. The only thing he could confirm was that he should be living in the era of the Previous Civilization.

The reason was that this era had an organization known as Moth to Fire.

But none of that was what he intended to think about right now. Staying alive was the foremost priority at this moment.

Leaning against the cold, hard wall, Su Qing'an looked at the faint light filtering through the gaps in the rubble above and said to the girl:

"Hey. If you keep refusing to tell me your name, I'm just going to give you one myself, you know?"

"...Do whatever you want." The girl's habitually cold expression cracked at the youth's words, but in the end, that was still how she answered.

Actually, if Su Qing'an insisted on knowing, after three days of living together, the girl would not have minded telling him her name. But if he did not ask directly, she would not say it.

Was that personality rigid, or merely awkward?

Still, that slight stubbornness might also have been part of her charm.

"I see. Then I'll just use a character from my former country," Su Qing'an said as he looked into the girl's eyes. "I'll call you Hua."

"Do whatever you want." Su Qing'an did not know whether it was just his imagination, but he felt that compared to before, the girl's response and tone had become much livelier.

Could he have unexpectedly chosen a character that was also part of her real name?

"Then that's what I'll call you from now on, Hua."

Su Qing'an smiled. Only when talking with Hua could he feel comforted and happy in spirit.

Sometimes, Hua felt like a cat to him.

Cautious, sensitive, easily startled, and difficult to approach—yet even when she wore a cold expression, she was still incredibly cute.

In short, perhaps because they were living together in an environment where they depended on each other for survival, his affection for Hua was quite high.

Before coming to this world, he had been someone who was not good at socializing. Ever since his parents died in a plane accident when he was thirteen, he had rarely interacted with society.

But now, merely by watching Hua's subtle expressions and movements, he could understand the girl's feelings and roughly grasp what she was thinking.

Aside from the fact that observing each other had been their only pastime over this long period, another reason was that the girl's personality itself was rather straightforward.

Hua was easy to understand in every sense.

Though if he was comparing her to a cat, it was a little regrettable that he had never seen her bristle.

Even in this perilous environment, where dying at any moment would not have been strange, Su Qing'an found himself thinking about such aimless things.

This was one of the methods he had used over the past three days to fight against fear and confusion.

But then, a voice shattered the tacit, peaceful atmosphere between them.

"Save me! I don't want to die! Is anyone there? Is anyone there?"

The voice came from above. A woman's desperate wails echoed through the space where the two of them were hiding.

Just like Su Qing'an when he had been hunted down three days ago, the woman had clearly reached the end of the road.

If he had not luckily fallen beside Hua back then, he would already have been a pile of bones.

If they called out now and told the woman to come down and hide with them in this shelter, she might be saved for the time being.

That was assuming they risked the possibility that the Zombies or Honkai Beasts would hunt her down here as well.

Su Qing'an did not dare gamble on it, and neither did Hua, who feared death.

Neither of them had the resolve to stake their lives on a stranger. Besides, even if they lost the gamble, that woman would still be unable to escape death.

Rationally speaking, the correct choice was to hold their breath, keep silent, and wait for the woman to die and the monsters to leave.

Hua and Su Qing'an remained silent. The woman's wails, the sound of flesh and blood being torn apart, and the stench of death drew closer to them than ever before. For those brief few minutes, the two of them were cautious even with every breath they took.

The woman's wail lasted less than three seconds, but both Su Qing'an and Hua remained silent for nearly an hour before slowly relaxing their tense bodies.

Neither Zombies nor Honkai Beasts had a habit of lingering in one place for too long.

They were safe for the moment.

But the atmosphere had turned bleak and heavy.

"Tell me... does this count as me killing her?" Hua hugged her legs tightly, a posture she was used to. She raised her eyes to look at the world beyond the crack, somewhat lost.

Hua was kind. Even though this disaster had worn away her innocence, that kindness still left her unable to suppress her guilt.

If she let herself dwell on it, this guilt would probably torment her for a long time.

"This isn't Hua's fault. When you lack the ability to help, protecting yourself is the right choice," Su Qing'an answered.

"But you understand that yourself, right? So what I want to say is, I was the one who trembled beside you in fear earlier, the one who made the cowardly choice to stand by and watch her die. So if that counts as killing someone..."

"Then Hua and I killed her together."

That was about as direct as it got.

"...Hmph... Why do you make it sound like we're accomplices?" The girl buried her head between her knees again and muttered as if dissatisfied.

But the tips of her small ears had turned red.

Embarrassed already? She was far too cute, Hua.

Su Qing'an hid the wrist where purple markings had appeared behind his back and smiled at the girl.

The third day passed.

If you think this book is good, remember to add it to your bookshelf so you can find it next time.